Beginning with the immigration of the “Georgia Salzburgers,” religious exiles from Europe, The Early History of the Lutheran Church in Georgia tells a story of faith and struggle that is deeply embedded in the religious and cultural life of the American colonial South. Previously unpublished and untranslated, Hermann Winde’s dissertation laid the foundation for a limited group of scholars and specialists who have continued to develop that story for over four decades. Now, both the detail that emerges through Winde’s primary sources and the breadth of the connections he makes across colonial Georgia’s geographical and cultural landscape will continue to appeal to scholars and general readers alike as they enter the world of Georgia’s first Lutheran communities.

A chronicle of the experiences and perceptions of a German Lutheran pastor called to serve a struggling community in the American South soon after the Revolutionary War.

In January 1785, a young African American woman named Elizabeth (Liss) was put on board the Lucretia in New York Harbor, bound for Charleston, where she would be sold to her fifth enslaver in just twenty-two years. Leaving behind a small child she had little hope of ever seeing again, Elizabeth was faced with the stark reality of being sold south to a life quite different from any she had known before. She had no idea that Robert Townsend, a son of the first family she was enslaved by, would locate her, safeguard her child, and return her to New York—nor that Robert, one of George Washington's most trusted spies, had joined an anti-slavery movement. As Robert and Elizabeth’s story unfolds, prominent Revolutionary figures cross their path, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Jupiter Hammon, John André, and John Adams, as well as participants in the Boston Massacre, the Sons of Liberty, the Battle of Long Island, Franklin’s Paris negotiations, and the Benedict Arnold treason plot. Elizabeth's journey brings a new perspective to America's founding—that of an enslaved Black woman seeking personal liberty in a country fighting for its own. The 2023 paperback edition includes a new chapter highlighting recent discoveries about Elizabeth's freedom and later life.

Salzburgers and Their Descendants is the original account of the lives and history of a colony of German Protestants who emigrated to Georgia in 1734. Following their arrival, they settled twenty-five miles north of Savannah, in Ebenezer, to create new lives for themselves in a "New World" of religious freedom. The account of this colony is beneficial to the study of Georgia history, as it furthers an understanding of the reasons for emigrating and of the struggles that settlers faced on arrival. The Georgia Open History Library has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this collection, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.